Atrial fib rillation is one of the more common heart rhythm disorders - it is estimated that up to more than 6 million people in the US alone struggle with the problem. Just as in some people the individual leads to pronounced discomfort (such as palpitations, fainting or deterioration of exercise tolerance, among others), some patients may be asymptomatic for some time. This situation is quite a risk - atrial fibrillation, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic, significantly increases the risk of stroke.

Because of the aforementioned risk, various researchers are looking for risk factors for atrial fibrillation - finding out which ones would lead to knowledge about which people are particularly worthy of diagnostic work-up in order to detect asymptomatic forms of the condition. It is well known that hypertension, diabetes and obesity, among others, may favour this pathology, but it appears that height is also linked to AF.

The fact that taller people may have an increased risk of atrial fibrillation has been reported by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania. They conducted a study whose results were quite surprising. The researchers concluded that for every increase in height of just over 2.5 cm above the average height - which is assumed to be 170 cm - the risk of atrial fib rillation increases by 3%.

At the moment, it is not entirely clear why the taller a person is, the greater their risk of atrial fib rillation would be - it is possible that genes are to blame. The authors of the study described here undertook some analysis and observed that there are some characteristic compilations of genes in tall patients that are associated with both height and risk of heart rhythm disorders.